Calendar

Question: What kind of exertion brings a person to a spiritual revelation?

Answer: A person’s feelings, thoughts, and experiences constantly change, and it isn’t by chance that it says that there is a clear and accurate law: “I have labored and I found.” The vessels and the Light can’t connect on the speaking level without our exertion. Exertion is the extra deficiency without which the Light can’t be revealed in the vessel on the speaking level, but only on the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate nature.

The reason is that first man was born circumcised (without desires to receive), which means that he was a holy animal, an angel. Thanks to the shattering of the vessels, the vessels that carry the essence of the Creator mixed with the vessels that are actually the essence of the created being. Thus, part of the Creator and part of the created being connect inside one vessel.

A person’s feelings, experiences, and thoughts change, but they don’t belong to him. These are the results of the game between the vessel and the Light that create these feelings in us. But by exerting myself, by trying to connect the vessels that are separate from one another by an abyss of mutual hatred, I seemingly overcome this hate and thus add my participation on the part of the vessel.

This is my exertion. Thus I judge both myself and the whole world to the scale of merit.

It turns out that the level of the speaking was not created from above. From above, we only received the level of animate. The first man, our initial soul, was an animal. But after the shattering, we receive very opposite discernments by which we can establish our own deficiencies. By our exertion we attain a new deficiency that didn’t exist previously, and this new deficiency is on the speaking level.

It’s different from the other deficiencies on the levels of the still, vegetative, and animate nature in this world, and which are not considered a created being in the soul. A created being is actually the deficiency we generate by our exertion! This deficiency wasn’t created by the Creator, and so it can rightfully be called a free, created being that wants to bring the Creator contentment. This is in fact a new desire, a new created being that was created by our exertion.[96041]From the 1st part of the Daily Kabbalah Lesson 12/19/12, “The Introduction to the Study of the Ten Sefirot”